


Pulling Strings

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-21
Updated: 2007-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:59:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I've been pulled by unseen strings, cut apart and pieced back together into an odd shape that looks like a girl."</p><p>Sequel to "Pinocchio."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pulling Strings

He didn't laugh the next morning. There was no sneer, no dirty look across the kitchen table. River had worn her bright yellow shirt with long sleeves and a long red skirt in an effort to look more cheerful than she felt. She had taken a long look at the bruises on her hips that morning, proof that flesh was still more fragile than anyone had accounted for. She had expected Jayne to be triumphant, some kind of domineering. She expected everyone to know what he had done without knowing the particulars. She expected everyone to know that she had finally succumbed to her fears of being connected by thin gossamer strings.

But no one knew anything, and he did not act in any untoward ways. Jayne confused her.

He didn't lie. She had told him that out of perfect honesty. While he sometimes did deceive, Jayne was more or less the most straightforward member of the crew. His thoughts traveled in straight lines by the most direct route. He didn't dead-end or backtrack, or take circuitous circles before winding his way to the point. No, that was River's job. She was the flowing thing, she was the creature that ebbed.

Jobs were slim after Miranda. The Alliance had been out of sorts, then contracted ever tighter about the Core worlds. The Rim was as stubborn as ever, and the Reavers were spread thinner in their space. River sometimes caught the echoes of their voices spinning out into the vast void of the 'verse. They were creatures of dark wants and perverted will, unable to think beyond the everpresent now, unable to contemplate more than desires that should have never been fulfilled. The Alliance was still trying to undo the damage done, politicians falling in amongst themselves like Reavers of another kind.

But there was no way to explain this coherently. River didn't know how she knew things, didn't know how to explain the thoughts that filtered through time and space. She didn't know how to explain the dreams she carried beneath her skin. She was all right physically, and Simon pronounced her stable. But she knew the stability was relative, built more of his good intentions and hope than of reality. She could feel the edges of her consciousness blur, the ether calling out to her. When she let go, instinct would take over, and her instincts had been rewritten and wrought into something dangerous. Threat, counter threat, react and retrieve the data to begin again. River was merely a sleepwalker marionette, another aspect pulling the strings to make her walk and talk with the appearance of being a girl.

River wasn't sure if she trusted Jayne's judgment in calling her a girl. She could accept it, because he did not lie about such things. He could boast and exaggerate, but he had a certain level of honor. Liquor, women, family, money and the job were sacred. All else could be bartered or ignored.

She lingered after breakfast. Serenity could find her own way through the black a while longer, as there was nowhere they had to be.

Jayne didn't look up at her as he brought his dishes to the sink. It was his turn for kitchen duty today, so the others had left quickly. "The captain and first mate brood. My brother and his bride copulate. Inara has solitary ritual." River stopped at the counter, unsure of how to proceed. "How do you spend excess time?"

He kept his head down, eyes on the plate. "Ain't you a reader?"

"Simon says it's not polite. I don't comprehend, but I obey the mandate."

"I meant actual books," Jayne said, voice somewhat clipped. He refused to look at her, and she couldn't understand why. She didn't understand anything about him, really. She could guess by his expression and his movement, by what he said and didn't say. She could guess in his thoughts, the linear fashion in which he lived. But she didn't _understand,_ and it nagged at her. Especially now, when he appeared to be her only ally in humanity.

"I don't know how girls spend their times alone," River admitted softly. "I used to play with Kaylee, but now she plays other games with Simon. They don't like me watching."

Jayne's lips quirked, but he quickly stifled the smile. "I don't reckon they would."

"I know twenty variants of Solitaire, but it pales quickly. There is no stimulation appropriate, I should think. If I could think." River bit her lip softly. "The others would think this a strange request. They think me strange."

"There's no such thing as normal," Jayne muttered beneath his breath. River could hear it, and looked at him curiously. Nuance and subtlety lived beneath the gruff exterior, something she had not expected. The rugged edges and bluster were something like artifice. That, she could possibly understand. The gears within her mind turned with clockwork precision; it's what made her a clockwork girl, a thing of wood and paint and connecting strings. The gauze over her eyes kept her shielded and numb, a carved idol of ivory.

"If there was such a thing, I would wish to become that," River replied just as softly. "Better the mediocrity of normalcy than the separation of mechanation."

"You made that word up," Jayne accused, looking up with a cocked eyebrow.

River smiled crookedly, a ghost of her playful childhood swimming up to the surface. "Perhaps I did. It's fun to. Sometimes language alone isn't appropriate for communication."

"Huh," he grunted, turning back to the dishes.

"You..." River licked her lips nervously. "You said I was a real girl."

Jayne didn't reply. He scrubbed the plate more furiously.

"I need to learn to not be responsible," River whispered fiercely. "I need to learn not to hurt at their casual comfort when it cuts me. I need to learn to push them away."

He looked at her suddenly, blue eyes sharp and assessing. "It won't be you, then."

"What?"

"What'd you call yourself? Wood and paint? Like a doll?" Jayne waited until River nodded her assent. "Dolls don't feel nothing, is that it?"

"They don't change," River said softly. "They don't mutate into something ugly and fierce." Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. "I've been pulled by unseen strings, cut apart and pieced back together into an odd shape that looks like a girl. I know this. They know this. They pretend they don't see it, that ignoring it would negate the facts."

Jayne finished the last plate in silence. "You ain't no doll," he said finally, drying his hands on a dish towel. He couldn't meet her eyes clearly. All of the sharp edges were gone, and River missed them. They were like cut glass, jewels that focused light so that it pierced deeply and through the haze River tried to hold around her. It softened the harshness of the thoughts that reached her, the expectations she couldn't help but fail. She wasn't a soft thing anymore, not the dancing girl ready to reach the height of intelligence in the most prestigious programs. She wasn't a child, not anymore, not really. She had become something strange, something beyond simple definition. While she knew she had perpetually disappointed her parents, it was a despair that filled her when she thought of disappointing Simon. He had risked so much to try to save her; it wasn't his fault she was broken beyond repair.

"Marionette," River supplied helpfully. She suppressed the thought of how she could pirouette in a perfect circle and bring her foot down hard enough to break the table in two. _That signal is gone, burnt out and let loose..._ she thought, tamping down on the fleeting impulse. "The responsibility strings hold me down and choke me at times."

"You ain't got strings."

River's face fell. He didn't understand, and the words coated her tongue thickly, too tied up and convoluted to fall in a steady waterfall. He had promised, though. If the time was necessary to cut the strings, to let loose the monstrous thing and destroy it before it overpowered the fragile girl within, he had promised to tell the truth and end it before it all spiraled out of control. Before she forgot herself, he could save her from the end. He could end the true madness bubbling within, the grotesque parody of a girl masquerading within her bones. He could cut it out, reduce her down to the essential elements of girl.

He touched her cheek gently, those laser blue eyes trained on hers when she looked up. He burned away the haze clouding her, the doubt and fear and swirling miasma of convoluted memory. He stripped her bare, sinew and tendon, liquid strings holding her together. He peeled back the enigmatic layers of tangential thought, burned away the hallucinations holding her perception together. It wasn't uncomfortable at all, a fact that startled her more than anything. It didn't frighten her any longer. Lucidity at times was almost seductive.

"Anyone pulling your strings now?" he asked, voice gentle.

"I don't know," she whispered, as honestly as she could allow herself to be. "I have not acted of my own accord before."

"You'll know if they lead you around by the nose. Someone like you, you're smart enough to know it." His thumb rubbed her cheek gently, a caring gesture.

Touched, River reached out and touched his cheek in return. "Most would fear such a one as me. Why don't you?"

"My Ma always said I didn't have much sense," Jayne mumbled, pulling away from her. "If you got any kinda sense, you'd keep those thoughts of yours to yourself. They wouldn't understand what you meant by saying you're full of strings and gears."

"You do," River murmured. She watched the laser eyes shut down, the wall of bluster build back up brick by brick. The shadows and Reaver cries would return, haunting memory lace his waking thoughts again. The others thought him dull, incapable of more than brutality. If they were wrong about Jayne, could they be wrong about her?

Jayne actually flushed. "I wouldn't've before yesterday."

"You help me keep balance," River murmured, looking at him with a pleading gaze. He had to understand, he had to realize the impact he had made.

He was shaking his head. "You're your own girl, _dong ma?_ Don't worry 'bout what they think of you. They don't understand, prob'ly never did."

River caught his hand tightly, feeling as though the movement had been directed without her own conscious thought. "Would we speak again?"

"When nobody's pullin' on them strings, sure." Jayne shook himself loose and then headed out of the kitchen.

River took a breath. In, out. In, out.

If she was a real girl, it was time to discover what that really meant.

 

The End.


End file.
